How One Stupid Tweet Blew Up Justine Sacco's Life

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Social media has a variety of platforms, allowing individuals to freely articulate their opinions to a large audience. This tool has it’s benefits as people can join together to raise awareness to certain matters but there is also a cruel downside to the public use of social media. In Jon Ronson’s article, “How One Stupid Tweet Blew Up Justine Sacco’s Life”, he distinctly reveals that the use of social media for debate/dissent/social and political change brings together a large audience to improve our society in difference to trolling, bullying and public shaming where there is an outstanding victim looked down upon through a widespread of individuals. These two differences stem from the belief of one that they are informing an individual of their wrong doing they are in fact leading on a greater attack than intended. The concept behind“social media is so perfectly designed to manipulate …show more content…

Sacco “thought there was no way that anyone could possibly think it [the tweet] was literal” (Ronson 6) but she doubted herself as social justice advocates started to torment Sacco over her naive statement. Instead of informing Sacco of her mistake, which would have been more appropriate, others continued to watch the advancement of the situation. This is where the mistake of fighting for a social change and bullying is often misinterpreted as the individuals online do not correctly inform the individual of their crime resulting in a harsh punishment of public shaming. This need for others to provoke the victim to a traumatized state may originate that “the collective fury felt righteous, powerful and effective” (Ronson 3), in such a way that the perpetrator feels as if they are providing a homage to our society and that “justice were being democratized” (Ronson 3). NEED ENDING

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